If you’ve read even a small number of posts here, you’ll know that I love all things bookish. I’ve posted before about the rise of e-books, but some exciting news has come out introducing a new contender in the e-book market: Google.
For years, Google has been systematically scanning in millions of out-of-print books into digital format, giving them a massive collection of digitized classic books. Their hope is to scan in every one of the world’s 150 million books and right now they claim to have already reached 10% of that goal.
(Interesting side-note: If you’ve ever been to a website that forced you to type in a “captcha“–usually two smudged words that you type in to verify you’re not a computer robot–you’ve likely been helping to digitize out-of-print books. Old books are scanned into computers, and then ordinary internet users help with the text recognition process through software like this. So each “captcha” provides two simultaneous benefits: security and free e-book digitizing.)
Looking to step further into the e-book world, Google will soon pair their collection of older digital books with a full array of modern titles.
I’m sure this move is causing anxiety among some of the major e-book players. Two significant gripes against Google’s major competitor, Amazon.com, are that you have a difficult time finding out-of-print books and that Amazon’s Kindle e-reader is proprietary, only allowing you to purchase books from Amazon.com (you also have to get a special application even to read Kindle e-books on other e-readers).
Google is going to dramatically change the game by solving each of these problems. Because their books will be much less “locked-down” than those from Amazon or Apple, readers will be more inclined to purchase from Google given similar prices. Also, Google’s unmatched searching capabilities will take book recommendations and research to a whole new level, giving their books some extra features.
But the most exciting part of Google’s new offering is the integration of e-books into their digital ‘cloud’. This will allow anyone to read from their personal library anywhere, on any Google-supported device. Instead of being locked to a specific e-reader, like a Kindle, Google will allow you to read from your e-book collection on any e-reader, or through the internet, on your phone, on a laptop, or pretty much any other device with an internet connection.
Google’s venture is a gigantic shift in the e-book realm, and it’s one I’ll be eagerly following.